For a manager wishing to improve his or her management skills, and the trusted mentor who is trying to help that manager to improve, one of the most valuable monitoring tools is a well-presented report showing the collected views of all those having dealings with the manager. This is the output from a Multi-source feedback, 360 degree feedback system or 360 Degree Appraisal system.
You ask individuals to report anonymously on their experience of the manager under a range of management skills headings. If you have a corporate Competencies Framework, the questionnaire can be based on its management competencies and the associated behaviours.
Because people respond anonymously, they can be more honest with their answers to a 360 degree feedback system than they might feel able to be if asked face to face. We can present results as a summary of all responses but you get more by comparing the views of different groups. A popular approach is to report separately the views of
- Team members (employees reporting to the manager)
- Peers (colleagues with whom the manager interacts, but with no reporting relationship with the manager)
- Team leader (or Boss - the manager or managers of the team of which the manager is a member)
- Self (the manager himself or herself)
And sometimes
- Clients / customers
Examples
Our output examples include one management feedback report based on a single source - the team reporting to the manager, and another from a 360 degree feedback system with all the sources mentioned above.
Absolute or Relative?
If the report shows the percentage of favourable responses for each item, and managers can compare their results with others', some people will find that they have performed less well than most of the others they discuss their results with. We think this is more likely to discourage than encourage effort to improve, especially if the manager's results are poor in all or most aspects of the report.
To avoid the danger of discouraging less able managers, or giving more able ones the idea that they need not make any effort to improve, we recommend presenting the 360 Degree Appraisal results not in absolute terms as described above, but relative to the participating manager's own average. For each manager's report we work out the average for this manager of all the topics in the questionnaire and then report how much better or worse was each topic compared to the manager's own average. This way, every participating manager receives a 360 Degree Appraisal report setting out his or her relative strengths and weaknesses, and in any conversation where managers are comparing their respective results everyone is on equal terms because everyone has relative strengths and development needs.
Reporting a 360 degree feedback system this way means everyone can be pleased about their relative strengths but is encouraged to see their relative weaknesses as development needs and to take steps to improve them. HR staff can still be provided with results expressed in absolute terms, if you choose, so they will know which are the stars and which are the managers most in need of development support.
